A former aide to Chris Christie texted to a colleague that the New Jersey governor “flat out lied” about the involvement of his senior staff and campaign manager during a news conference about the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal, according to a new court filing.

Chris Christie. Photograph: Mel Evans/AP

A transcript of the text is contained in court filings submitted late Tuesday by attorneys representing Bill Baroni, who faces trial next month with Christie’s ex-deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, on charges they helped orchestrate the September 2013 lane closures.

The closures were meant to create traffic jams in the city of Fort Lee to punish its Democratic mayor for not endorsing the Republican governor, prosecutors say.

Speaking to reporters in New York after appearing on a sports talk radio show on Wednesday morning, Christie denied the claim that he lied.

Hillary Clinton pitches candidacy in Mormon-owned newspaper op-ed

In an apparent bid to capitalize on rock-bottom approval ratings for the Republican nominee in Utah, Hillary Clinton has penned an op-ed in the Deseret News to pitch herself to Mormon voters in the traditionally red state.

Hillary Clinton Photograph: Gregg Newton/AFP/Getty Images

“As Americans, we hold fast to the belief that everyone has the right to worship however he or she sees fit,” Clinton wrote in the Mormon Church-owned newspaper. “I’ve been fighting to defend religious freedom for years. As secretary of state, I made it a cornerstone of our foreign policy to protect the rights of religious minorities around the world - from Coptic Christians in Egypt to Buddhists in Tibet. And along with Jon Huntsman, our then-ambassador in Beijing, I stood in solidarity with Chinese Christians facing persecution from their government.”

Mormon voters have been unreceptive to Donald Trump, whose braggadocious personality and materialism run counter to church teachings on modesty and generosity, and whose proposals to ban Muslims from immigrating to the United States evoke the Church of Latter Day Saints’ own history of religious persecution by the US government.

Clinton hammered that last point in the editorial, writing that Trump’s Muslim ban “would undo centuries of American tradition and values”.

“To this day, I wonder if he even understands the implications of his proposal,” Clinton continued. “This policy would literally undo what made America great in the first place.”

House speaker Paul Ryan has released a video warning that “the loudest voices” shouldn’t be listened to in government, instead urging voters to remember that “ideas are really what make this country great, and we have ideas for making this country great.”

“Ideas are really what make this country great, and we have ideas for making this country great,” Ryan said in the video, which directs his Twitter followers to a site wherein Ryan outlines his direction for America.

“It’s very clear that there are going to be noise and news of the day that can clearly distract government, it can distract Congress, it can distract the people,” Ryan continued.

Who could he be talking about? We’ll be taking guesses in the comments!

Donald Trump’s campaign is fundraising off of comments he made during a rally in North Carolina yesterday in which he seemed to suggest that supporters of the second amendment take matters into their own hands if Hillary Clinton is elected president, emailing supporters that “the media” are trying to “stop the momentum of the campaign.”

Donald Trump Jr. Photograph: Keith Warren/AP

In an email sent by Donald Trump, Jr., titled “More lies form the liberal media,” the candidate’s son decries the implication that his father encouraged the assassination of either Clinton or of federal judges as “ALL lies and spin,” before asking for money to support the campaign.

“The media are trying to stop the momentum of the campaign and they are failing badly,” the younger Trump wrote. “You know everything the media says about my father is ALL lies and spin - and they are all objectively FALSE. Yet the liberal media are pushing this narrative 24 hours a day! They are DESPERATE to stop the Trump movement. So we are going to go DIRECTLY to the people.”

The younger Trump announced the launch of a one-week “Power the Trump Train” event, in which the campaign hopes to raise $1m per day for a week “to smash through the liberal media filter and connect directly with voters”.

“As you know, my father thinks big,” Trump wrote. “That’s why we decided to set a huge goal to raise $1 million each day over the next week.”

In a withering editorial for the Washington post, MSNBC breakfast television host Joe Scarborough has called upon the Republican party, of which he is a member, to remove Donald Trump as its presidential nominee, calling Trump’s implication that his supporters should take the second amendment into their own hands in response to Hillary Clinton’s possible election “a bloody line” to cross.

“A bloody line has been crossed that cannot be ignored,” Scarborough, a onetime Republican congressman from Florida, wrote. “At long last, Donald Trump has left the Republican Party few options but to act decisively and get this political train wreck off the tracks before something terrible happens.”

Trump has been accused of a making an “assassination threat” against Clinton at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, after riffing on the next president’s power to appoint supreme court justices. “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the second amendment,” said Trump, eliciting boos from the crowd. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”

This, in Scarborough’s view, amounts to a threat against the former secretary of state.

“Trump and his supporters have been scrambling wildly all day to explain away the inexplicable, but they can stop wasting their time,” Scarborough wrote. “The GOP nominee was clearly suggesting that some of the ‘Second Amendment people’ among his supporters could kill his Democratic opponent were she to be elected.”

Scarborough and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, were once accused of being overly familiar with Trump during the early days of the Republican presidential primary, but have landed on the candidate’s “blacklist” after Brzezinski appeared disappointed in House speaker Paul Ryan’s decision to endorse his campaign.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

I don't watch or do @Morning_Joe anymore. Small audience, low ratings! I hear Mika has gone wild with hate. Joe is Joe. They lost their way!

Ryan, who did not accept Nehlen’s challenge to a debate during the campaign, told reporters in Janesville on Tuesday night: “We knew we were going to do well. The outcome is exactly what we were hoping for and what we were expecting. Desperate candidates do desperate things for attention and I think that’s what we saw here.”

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “Congratulations to my friend Paul Ryan on a well-earned victory. Speaker Ryan’s commitment to faithfully representing the people of Wisconsin and making the case for conservatism have never changed, and his years of principled public service make him a trusted leader in our party.”

Julian Assange, editor of the nonprofit Wikileaks, told a Dutch TV station that a Democratic National Committee staffer who was killed in Washington, DC earlier this summer may have been a “source” for the organization.

“Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks,” Assange told Dutch TV, according to the New York Post. When asked to clarify, Assange said: “I’m suggesting that our sources take risks.”

“Why make the suggestion about a young guy being shot in the streets of Washington?” Assange was asked.

“Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States,” Assange said. “Our sources face serious risks. That’s why they come to us. So we can protect their anonymity.”

The young DNC staffer in question, Seth Rich, was shot and killed in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Northeast DC in early July.

New batch of Hillary Clinton emails obtained by legal group

The US state department has turned over 44 previously unreleased Hillary Clintonemail exchanges that the Democratic presidential nominee failed to include among the 30,000 private messages she turned over to the government last year. They show her interacting with lobbyists, political and Clinton Foundation donors and business interests as secretary of state.

The conservative legal group Judicial Watch obtained the emails as part of its lawsuit against the state department. They cover Clinton’s first three months as secretary of state in early 2009, a period for which Clinton did not turn over any emails to the state department last year. The government found the newly disclosed messages during a search of agency computer files from longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

In one instance, Clinton exchanged messages with a senior Morgan Stanley investment executive whom she met with later that year at her office in Washington. They were among 246 pages of Abedin messages turned over to Judicial Watch.

Clinton campaign officials did not immediately answer questions about the issue.

From implying that an aggressive debate moderator was menstruating to dismissing five years spent as a prisoner of war as unheroic to questioning the impartiality of a federal judge because of his racial background, Trump has broken through the floorboards and into the subbasement of what has been considered acceptable behavior by a major-party candidate for president. But hinting that his supporters might take the issue of the second amendment into their own hands if opponent Hillary Clinton were elected, prompting allegations that he had threatened Clinton with assassination, is uncharted territory even for Trump.

His campaign has accused “dishonest media” of reading into Trump’s remarks something that wasn’t there; House speaker Paul Ryan stated that the line “sounds like a joke gone bad”.

Here are his comments in full:

Hillary wants to abolish – essentially abolish – the second amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you could do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I dunno. But, but I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day. If Hillary gets to put her judges, right now we’re tied, you see what’s going on. Because Scalia, this was not supposed to happen. Justice Scalia was going to be around for 10 more years at least. And this is what happens, that was a horrible thing. So now look at it. Hillary essentially wants to abolish the second amendment.

Trump’s off-script remarks will likely dominate a chunk of today’s political news cycle – as they often do – but the pageant of American electoral politics marches on. Here is the official schedule for the candidates today:

Clinton will tour Raygun, a popular printing and design company in Des Moines, Iowa, followed by a rally at Abraham Lincoln high school in Des Moines at 1.45pm ET (doors open at 11.45am local time). Running mate Tim Kaine is campaigning in Dallas, Texas, but has no public events scheduled.

Trump will be making remarks at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon, Virginia, at 3pm ET, followed by a rally at the BB&T Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at 7pm ET. Running mate Mike Pence will be holding a town hall at the Mandalay in Dayton, Ohio, at 3pm ET, followed by a rally at the Pritchard Laughlin Civic Center in Cambridge, Ohio, at 7pm ET.